The European Commission presented on July 29th, the Proposal for the Council Regulation amending Regulation (EC) No 1234/2007 establishing a common organisation of agricultural markets and on specific provisions for certain agricultural products, the single CMO Regulation. The wine CMO, Regulation (EC) No 479/2008 will be repealed by the present proposal and its substance be fully incorporated into the single CMO Regulation.

This proposal is an essential component in the Commission’s plans to streamline and simplify the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). The key issues of the Commission’s approach have been set out in its 2005 Communication on "Simplification and Better Regulation for the Common Agricultural Policy". In this document the Commission underlined that “Reducing red tape in the farm sector by making rules more transparent, easier to understand and less burdensome will reduce costs for businesses and ensure that European citizens receive value for money".

Council Regulation (EC) No 1234/2007 establishing a common organisation of agricultural markets and on specific provisions for certain agricultural products, the so-called "single CMO Regulation" revised the existing 21 regulations on sector-specific common market organisations (CMOs) and combined them into a comprehensive single regulation, with a view to streamlining and simplifying the legal framework without changing the underlying policies thus providing a single set of harmonised rules in the classic areas of market policy such as intervention, private storage, import tariff quotas, export refunds, safeguard measures, state aid and competition rules, and the communication and reporting of data.

The first version of the single CMO Regulation, as set in December 2006, could not take into account some substantive amendments in certain sectors (notably the fruit and vegetables, processed fruit and vegetables, and wine sectors). Whilst amendments in the fruit and vegetables and processed fruit and vegetables sectors have, meanwhile, been incorporated into the single CMO Regulation, the reform of the wine sector has only just been finalised by the publication of Council Regulation (EC) No 479/2008 on the common organisation of the market in wine.

Content of the Proposal

This proposal will further simplify the legislative environment of the CAP, by adding certain rules to the single CMO Regulation which were still missing. It is expected to lead to significant simplification of existing legislation.

The single CMO Regulation did not yet incorporate the main aspects of the wine CMO given that that CMO was pending for a policy reform at the time when the single CMO Regulation was proposed. With regard to the wine sector, the single CMO Regulation as published in November 2007 therefore only foresees the applicability of the Management Committee procedure. In the single CMO Regulation it is spelled out that the wine sector will have to be incorporated to its full extent once the policy reform has been enacted which has happened by way of the publication of Regulation (EC) No 479/2008 on the common organisation of the market in wine. This Regularion is therefore repealed and incorporated to the single CMO Regulation.